I am a Managing Partner at Brookside Strategies, LLC, an energy and utility management consulting firm based in Darien, Connecticut. I've spilled blood, sweat and tears grappling with the full spectrum of barriers and misconceptions about distributed generation and energy-efficiency technologies. Previously, I practiced law in New York City at Paul Weiss Rifkind Garrison & Wharton, LLP and Jenner & Block, LLP. I also attended journalism school at Columbia University and earned a JD at Stanford Law School. I've written about energy and environmental issues for Forbes, The Nation, Mother Jones and several other publications. I am the Chair of the Northeast Clean Heat and Power Initiative. Drop me a line - or two - at wmp@cleanbeta.com.

The wedges paradigm, which provides a framework for formulating emissions reduction strategies based on currently available technologies, quickly became the gold standard in the field of climate change mitigation. And for good reason. It was (and still is) a very effective and pragmatic way to package discrete mitigation strategies into a single platform, which could be optimized in much the same way that investment portfolios are optimized.

If Superstorm Sandy taught us anything, it was that mitigation by itself will neither prevent climate change from wreaking havoc on society nor protect us when it does. Indeed, climate change mitigation measures may make the damage and disruption caused by climate change considerably worse in some circumstances. Pro-active adaptation to climate change – or, strategies for enhancing society’s ability to cope with the negative effects of climate change – begins with breaking down the mitigation stovepipe.

The climate system is not a stovepipe and any policy response to climate change that pretends otherwise is likely to be the road to ruin. This has vast implications for energy and urban planning protocols, including the Urban Green Council’s 90×50 vision.

By framing decisions and objectives narrowly, the wedges paradigm (at least as applied in scores of analyses like the 90×50 report) prevents robust consideration of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in responding to climate change.

By way of example, imagine choosing between two policy options – A and B – for responding to the threat of global warming. Option A would reduce GHG emissions by 90% by 2050, but only if the future unfolded as anticipated. Option B would reduce GHG emissions by 70% by 2050, but would do so across a range of possible futures. A wooden application of the wedges model would prioritize the former over the latter.

This fixation on optimality often results in the selection of an option that sacrifices agility in the hopes of achieving the best possible result in the current case. For example, such options include the selection of a military option that will work if an adversary does what is expected, a network that has only the links that are expected to be used, or a process that restricts participation, but is fast. When things go right, they go very right. When things do not go as anticipated, they may not work at all. This form of gambling is not a good bet . . . .

The same can be said – and said emphatically – about the prudence of gambling in this form in the context of climate change.

By deepening reliance on the conventional electric grid and eliminating the use of natural gas in New York City buildings altogether, the Council’s mitigation strategies would likely exacerbate the vulnerability of New York City’s energy systems to extreme weather and other adverse impacts of climate change.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that: “It is essential to look at how the various components of the energy-supply chain might be affected by climate change . . to ensure that any mitigation programs adopted now will still function adequately if altered climatic conditions prevail in the future.”

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“the Council’s mitigation strategies would likely exacerbate the vulnerability of New York City’s energy systems to extreme weather.”

…So we should focus on structuring the energy system so as to prepare for one-off extreme whether events that we know will happen…versus minimize our impact on long-term day-to-day climate shift??

Consider: Anthropogenic Climate Forcing is a moving target: The more we amplify it, the more it (climate change) moves, and the more climate change moves, the more difficulty we have planning mass agriculture to feed 7 billion. Seems to me these ideas priorities disaster relief for isolated events (albeit bad events) over food production and food security, since agriculture is itself mostly all about planning.

Thanks for your comment. I did not intend to suggest that climate change mitigation is no longer important. If anything, climate change mitigation is more important now than it was when the folks at Princeton dreamed up the wedges concept. As for “one-off extreme weather events,” we should structure our energy system to manage risk effectively.

What climate problems? I mean, really, what climate problems? A Hurricane? Really? As if that is something that has never happened before? (There have been worse hurricanes in our history than Sandy, which should be called Hurricane Sandy, not Superstorm Sandy. It was not that super.) We have snow in February in the midwest? As if that is something new under the sun? Global Warming is a hoax, meant only to separate you from from your money.

Even a reduction of 70% would be a huge contribution to the basic goal of limiting GHG emissions.

The basic job of humanity is to select a strategy that keeps open some sort of path to the future across very nearly all contingencies. We should not, for instance, adopt a policy toward global warming that will work just fine in 90% of the cases, if the other 10% of the cases result in our getting driven to the edge of extinction.

We should not shut down nuclear power plants because we fondly imagine that wind and solar will do the trick. Nor should we shut down R&D into wind and solar because we confidently expect that nuclear power will do the trick. A stool that stands on one or two legs is not stable. Even three legs are not all that stable; what if one buckles? We need conservation, wind, solar, and nuclear. And down the road, when we’ve mapped out the terrain pretty well and weathered the crisis, we can go and optimize.

Obama is promoting Cap and Trade which will cost America billions while countries like China and India keep on polluting. A peer-reviewed survey of 1077 geoscientists and engineers finds that “only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis,” according to James Taylor, writing at Forbes.com. As he points out, if there is a scientific consensus at all, it would have to be skepticism toward anthropogenic global warming. Yet President Obama in his State of the Union speech Tuesday cited the now-discredited notion of such a consensus as the foundation of his green agenda. It is BS.

Uh Brad, the consensus is 97% among climate scientists, not geoscientists or engineers, even if your 36% number is accurate. That’s like saying 19 out of 20 oncologists say I have colon cancer, but my dentist says it is hemorrhoids and to just put some Prep H on it and I will be fine.

you aren’t going to heat or cool 12 million people with imaginary physics. the energy has to come from somewhere. either water turbines, coal, oil, etc. real energy. wind farms? NOT! solar? not even close. wave machines? right. neither are you going to TRANSPORT all the food, water, electricity, and people, along with everything else they require, clothing, housing, etc. what’s going to power all the semi trucks or trains? get real.